How much is too much? Try Babylon,” the latest film from Damien Chazelle. Within five minutes, we realize that excess is in the air—and, indeed, all over the camera lens, in the form of elephant dung. The ensuing half hour, an excursion into the orgiastic, brings us a woman peeing onto the bloated belly of a partygoer, alpine hills of cocaine, and a dwarf using a giant phallus as a pogo stick. Still to come: a movie producer walking around in the desert, at night, with his head stuck in a toilet seat, and, by way of a bonne bouche, toward the end of the feast, a guy who consumes live rats. Happy now?
This is a film about films and filming. It would swallow itself if it could. Much of the saga, which kicks off in 1926, is set in Hollywood, and in the blast area that surrounds it. Our guide to the festivities is Manny Diego Calva), who rises from the rank of lowly fixer to that of studio executive, yet never achieves the solidity of a main character. At the initial soirée, he falls for a gadabout named Nellie LaRoy Margot Robbie), who can't park a car without crashing into a statue, and who caps off her evening with a crowd surf. She, too, will reach undreamed-of heights. Tellingly, both she and Manny begin their ascent on the day after the debauch; he becomes a personal assistant to an affable superstar, Jack Conrad Brad Pitt), while Nellie, at short notice, gets the opportunity to flaunt her acting skills. This she does with gusto—hoofing, grinning, and turning her tears on and off like a plumber fixing a faucet.
This story is from the January 02 - 09, 2023 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the January 02 - 09, 2023 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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NO WAY BACK
The resurgence, in the past decade, of Paul Schrader as one of the most accomplished and acclaimed contemporary movie directors is part of a bigger trend: the self-reinvention of Hollywood auteurs as independent filmmakers.
PRIMORDIAL SORROW
\"All Life Long,\" the title of the most recent album by the composer and organist Kali Malone, is taken from a poem by the British Symbolist author Arthur Symons: \"The heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,/ All life long crying without avail,/As the water all night long is crying to me.\"
CHOPPED AND STEWED
The other day, at a Nigerian restaurant called Safari, in Houston, Texas, I peeled back the plastic wrap on a ball of fufu, a staple across West Africa.
TOUCH WOOD
What do people do all day? My daughter loves to read Richard Scarry's book of that title, though she generally skips ahead to the hospital pages.
HELLO, HEARTBREAK
Heartbreak cures are as old as time, or at least as old as the Common Era.
ENEMY OF THE STATE
Javier Milei's plan to remake Argentina begins with waging war on the government.
THE CHOOSING ONES
The saga of my Jewish conversion began twenty-five years ago, when I got engaged to my first husband.
OBSCURE FAMILIAL RELATIONS, EXPLAINED FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Children who share only one parent are half siblings. Children who have been bisected via a tragic logging accident are also half siblings, but in a different way.
NOTE TO SELVES
The Sonoran Desert, which covers much of the southwestern United States, is a vast expanse of arid earth where cartoonish entities-roadrunners, tumbleweeds, telephone-pole-tall succulents make occasional appearances.
BADDIE ISSUES
\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"
